Web CMS Winners and Losers

The explosion of company Web sites as a primary means of delivering content and interacting with customers, partners, and employees has caused an increase in demand for Web content management (Web CMS), technology that can not only streamline Web content production and publishing processes, but also provide personalization to users across multiple sites.

A recent Forrester Research survey showed that 84 percent of enterprises plan to increase their WCM deployments to consolidate rogue sites and departmental intranets.

“We are experiencing renewed interest in WCM as organizations look to consolidate Web sites and support new, Web-based growth initiatives,” said Kyle McNabb, senior analyst at Forrester. “WCM is not new, and a successful implementation depends greatly on how well any product matches the diverse needs of content owners, contributors, site managers, and IT in support of the organization's external and internal site initiatives.”

To assess the state of the WCM market, Forrester used its Wave(TM) methodology to evaluate nine global market providers: EMC/Documentum, FatWire, Interwoven, Microsoft, Percussion, RedDot Solutions, Stellent, Tridion, and Vignette

The vendors were evaluated on approximately 200 criteria, grouped to address the varying needs of a diverse set of users — IT developer/admin, site manager/power user, and contributor user groups.

The study was broken down into two usage scenarios — external site publishing, which focuses on dynamic delivery and personalization, and internal site publishing, which focuses on content repository services and usability.

While the scoring criteria were the same for both scenarios, the category weightings were adjusted to reflect the external and internal site requirements expressed by enterprise-class organizations.

External Sites
WCM vendors demonstrated clear differentiation in their support of external site initiatives, and a small vendor from Europe, Tridion, showcased the greatest differentiation. The final evaluation showed:

** FatWire, Tridion, and Vignette demonstrated clear product strength, offering strong dynamic content delivery and site and content personalization support.

** Enterprise content management (ECM) suite vendors, Interwoven and Stellent, provided breadth through comprehensive WCM products that not only address the management and publishing of content but also help deliver dynamic, personalized user experiences.

** EMC/Documentum, Microsoft, Percussion, and RedDot offered products that support an organization's external site initiatives, but lacked breadth and/or depth in areas that impact their external site support.

Internal Sites
WCM vendors showcased better in support of internal site initiatives, due to their stronger content repository services and content management administration capabilities. The final evaluation showed:

** EMC/Documentum, Interwoven, and Stellent led the way, demonstrating strength in content repository services, taxonomy management, metadata discovery, and multisite management support.

** Tridion, Percussion, and RedDot fared well, receiving high marks in content management usability, strong in-context editing, and multisite management capabilities, but scored lower in content repositories and metadata discovery capabilities.

** FatWire, Vignette, and Microsoft offered strong site and content personalization capabilities, but lacked strong content repository services, impacted primarily by lack of support for WebDAV for content contribution and limited workflow support.

Details on WCM vendor ratings are included in the research, “Web Content Management, Q1 2005,” and an overall industry trends in the report, “Web Content Management Adoption in 2005.” Both reports are available to Forrester WholeView2(TM) clients and can be found through www.forrester.com.

Web CMS Winners and Losers

The explosion of company Web sites as a primary means of delivering content and interacting with customers, partners, and employees has caused an increase in demand for Web content management (Web CMS), technology that can not only streamline Web content production and publishing processes, but also provide personalization to users across multiple sites.\n\nA recent Forrester Research survey showed that 84 percent of enterprises plan to increase their WCM deployments to consolidate rogue sites and departmental intranets.

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